Posted on 03/31/2011 8:45:14 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The long-standing question surrounding when early humans migrated into South Asia may have its answer at this archaeological site in South India.
The artifacts, Acheulean stone cutting tools, were uncovered by a team of researchers at a site in the Kortallaiyar river basin in Attirampakkam, India. Acheulean tools are usually associated with early humans who lived between 1.6 million and 100,000 years ago in Africa and southwest Asia and, based on earlier archaeological excavations and studies, are thought to have originated in Africa around 1.6 million years ago and then spread through Eurasia later. The precise chronology, or timing, of the spread of this technology and thus their associated toolmakers through India and South Asia has remained a mystery. However, excavating at the Attirampakkam site, Shanti Pappu of the Sharma Center of Heritage Education and his team unearthed more than 3,500 quartzite stone artifacts, including cleavers, flakes, and more than 70 Acheulean handaxes datable to over 1 million years in age.
(Excerpt) Read more at popular-archaeology.com ...
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In my personal collection, I have a 70,000 year-old Neanderthal handaxe, and it gives me great pleasure to handle it and think of the immense amount of time that has passed since then.
Multiregionalism / Asian Origins.
There must be hundreds, if not thousands of lost civilizations of builders.
Man using tools a million years ago. Wow.
There must be hundreds, if not thousands of lost civilizations of builders.
—
If knowledge is an ocean, then man has a bucket full.
If Man’s history is a lake, then we know a thimble full.
The key issue is: when did they all sapienize? In other words, is there evidence that sapienization happened once (in Africa), and then the salient populations moved out and interbred with the lesser lights living in Asia and Europe—and Africa—OR, sapienization happened locally everywhere. What says you guys and Wolpoff on that? Thanks.
And I bet that THOSE early humans were really good at math...
Third possibility: sapienization happened gradually over a population that was not just restricted to a little piece of Africa. In order words, movement of individuals and their genes in prehistoric times was higher than we think.
Gotta love those typos. ;)
Should be 1.07 million years old.
I do not think the clear case has been made that sapienization occurred in Africa, although 90% of the anthropology community is sure HOPING that's the case...
I don’t think sapienization happened in Africa, or at least exclusively in Africa. I don’t think that human habitats in ancient times were all that static, particularly in the region from Africa to India. Migrations happen, and over time they happen in many directions. Over the course of a thousand years, genes will migrate long distances, even if individual humans don’t.
It's been a while since I read Wolpoff's book...
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